One peculiar corner of the web

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A lot of companies and small businesses have Pages on Facebook that they use to communicate and engage with customers. The idea seems simple. People Like your Page and get Notifications that appear in their Facebook News Feed when you post. The reality is quite a ways off from this and we recently had a post on The Sentry Box Facebook Page that illustrated that quite nicely.

The store manager, Greg, posted a link to a video of someone doing a rapid-fire archery demonstration. This video is utterly unrelated to what the store does but it is a bit of fun. That link reached 94% of our fans. I’ve replaced the actually reach numbers with percentages for this discussion.

Greg’s comment is inadvertently accurate. The reach of this post is insane.

So its been a while since I posted and also a while since I was able to game regularly. I’ve picked up some evening shifts at Sentry Box as well as doing demos for the store so my available free time has been cut rather dramatically. I have been doing a bit of painting and recently finished five Chaos Dwarfs, nine Hobgoblins and an Ogre. I have some High Elf figures that I am in the midst of painting and will post some photos once I get them based.

I have been reading the Federation Commander rulebook and the Tactics Manual a fair bit. I am hoping to play the game more and so I’m trying to make sure that I have the rules down and also have a better grasp of the basic tactics for the game.

Finally, my Wave 2 shipment of Rivet Wars figures came in recently so I spent a bit of time unpacking and organizing it. I’m planning on running a “mega battle” at Sentry Box using the additional tiles I bought and as many of the figures as I can. The idea being to have a day long battle running that people can drop in and out of.

Michelle and I also managed to play a few games of Ascension. I think she was actually surprised by how much she liked it. Hopefully I’ll be able to grab the full game, we’re using the Apprentice Set, and have a few more games of it as I rather like the game and Michelle doesn’t seem to mind it.

After dragging my terrain and figures to Sentry Box for a few games I decided to move some of my painting supplies and fixtures to a different table so I can clear off my 4′ x 8′ table and start to use it for games. It was originally my gaming table when we were in Vancouver but when we moved to Calgary it, for a series of different reasons, primarily became a storage space and then a place for my painting table.

It is one thing though to bring down a small number of figs to Sentry Box and use the terrain there for a game and its quite another to drag down a full Bolt Action army and two boxes of terrain for a game. So my painting station has been moved to my work table (which doesn’t get used for work a lot to be honest) and I am in the process of cleaning off the rest of the detritus from the table so it will be clear to use for gaming.

This also means that it will be clear for other games but the aim is to make a space for Bolt Action and the other WWII games that I am planning on playing.

Wizards of the Coast has a series of pre-release events for the upcoming Return to Ravnica set for Magic the Gathering. I was originally planning on going to a midnight event at Sentry Box but I was far too sick with a cold to go on Friday and their Saturday event was also booked. Happily I was able to find some space at the two Sunday pre-release events at Revolution Games.(more…)

If you are interested in getting some very nicely painted 40K Orks then check out my latest post on Bartertown. I tried my best but my love of the 40K background and fluff is inversely proportional to the fun I have with the game. Which really does suck. I’ve had far more fun playing Warhammer Fantasy and Malifaux and so I am going to be concentrating on those games instead.

Did a trade today for four starter sets for Malifaux including the two Gremlin starters, the Victorias starter and the Nicodem starter. I now have Som’er Teeth Jones and Ophelia LaCroix and enough undead models to properly do a Nicodem crew. My main interest was getting Ophelia but since she can’t take Pigs in her force I will probably be using Som’er Teeth Jones just so I can play a crew that has pigs and the Taxidermst. I picked up the Victorias as well, not out of any great immediate interest in them but because I think that they might be fun to play at some point in the future.

So now I need to clean and base a pile of new minis and figure out what I want to add to Ophelia’s crew to get her to 35SS for a game.

I mad a quick pitstop at Sentry Box today to grab my copy of the Cutlass! fantasy pirate rules from Black Scorpion Miniatures. The book itself looks amazing and Tammy from Tears of Envy does her usual excellent job with the layout and design work on the interior and the game tokens.

One of the main concerns with these rules that I have seen expressed online is the activation system. At the beginning of each turn each player makes an Authority roll and that is the number of activation points they have during the turn. All leaders in a pirate gang start with a D8 for Authority and there are two problems with that. The first is having players roll opposing high and low values for Authority – a 1 and an 8. There is really nothing that can be done in the game but the suggestion on the Black Scorpion forums is to roll two dice and pick the highest. I’ve yet to play the game so I don’t know how much of a problem it would be but it seems an unlikely enough occurrence that it shouldn’t warrant much concern.(more…)

Did two deals this weekend and added quite a few new Malifaux figures to my collection. I picked up a Sonia Cridd starter set as well as a McMourning starter, 3 Mindless Zombies, 3 Crooked Men, Killjoy and a Vulture. I’m not actually all that interested in McMourning but it was a good way to pick up some of the undead figures that I will need for my Nicodem crew.

Both crews have figures in them that I really don’t care much for. The McMourning set has the T&A Nurses that I really dislike. I don’t tend to like T&A that much but I also don’t see how the figures really fit in with a lunatic like McMourning. More Igor type figures as replacements would make sense but in this case this is one instance in which Wyrd’s initial attempt to place existing figures into their Malifaux background doesn’t work for me.

I really like all of the figures in the Sonia Criid starter and intend to use them all but I have never really liked Sonia. She seems far less dynamic the character is presented in the background. I am pondering picking up this new Reaper western mini and converting her to have a sword in one hand and using it as a replacement for Sonia. Sonia’s stats and background are fun and the Witchling Stalkers seem really interesting as well but her figure really stops me from having any interest in playing her. I really do suspect that there will be converting in my future.

In any case, the Withchling Stalkers will find a place with my Ortega crew :-)

It appears that we all need to find a new place to play Strange Aeons as the local game store, Great White, has shut down. I am not sure what the issue was but one day it was running and the next it was closed due to non-payment of rent. I suspect that this issue came as a surprise to Kyle and the staff as they didn’t appear to make any mentions of there being trouble.

There are quite a few good gaming stores here in Calgary but Great White was ten minutes away and was in a mall with a pretty good food-fair so it is going to be missed.